Incarcérés
by Gragagagagagagaga
Summary: Valjean and Javert each spent nearly twenty years in Toulon. These are those years, from beginning to end. Slash, angst, not canon compliant.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Not Mine.

At the age of fourteen or possibly sixteen at the most, he had already held the air of a man. While some men are simply born more effete than others in visage and form, he did not even exhibit the softness of youth. It seemed wrong for him to truly be so young. Those who did not look closely would have never suspected that he was still almost a child. He was broad and strong and held his shoulders with an unshakable posture that would have been the envy of any army brat. His dark hands were indefatigable as was his gaze. His sharp eyes seemed to be comprised not of flecks of color, but shards of scattered and unspoken memories. He looked out at the world through a veil of dark hair. He never even seemed to flinch, he was impenetrable. He was separate from his surroundings, though acutely aware.

The observations of an hour.

Not a single thing about him seemed French. He was dark and thick, but too imposing to glean any specifics at a faraway glance. In his proximity retaining any observations regarding his person was even more impossible. He had caught one of the other boys gazing in his direction and sent him a look of such poison that I feared he would shrivel away on the spot.

He arrived with several other boys seeking boys employment at Toulon and there was a world of difference between their incomplete gangly limbs, unblinking eyes, and lazily sloping shoulders and the vision beside them. He was dressed in rags which barely sufficed, but even poor cloth could not dampen the potency of his presence. They waited in a line outside of the warden's office. Me standing against the opposite wall; the boys and him by the door. It was my task to escort them there, where each would be assigned to a guard as an assistant. My rank was not yet high enough to merit an assistant and I knew I would not be considered. This filled me with disappointment.

"Where are you boys from?" I asked.

"Nantes." Said two relatively small and scrawny boys with unremarkable tawny hair. I wondered if they were related and what had brought them from nearly the opposite end of the country.

"St. Denis." Said the vast majority in a broken unison. They spoke of the local orphanage and I pitied them. It was alarming how many of the children orphanages turned out I knew intimately from their long stays in the prison of Toulon.

"Avignon." I thought he might have said that but it was only a mousy child who stood before him. The one whose answer I sought stood in stony silence, half of his chiseled face completely obscured by dark hair. Others rested tiredly against the stone walls. He stood firm, entirely removed. The others seemed to have bonded somewhat over the days they had waited to meet with the warden. While they would eye him warily from time to time he barely seemed to register them. His mouth was drawn into an unyielding line as he slowly surveyed his surroundings. What he thought was anyone's guess.

"And you, son?"

His eyes turned to me and pierced me as if I had just hurled a grave insult at him. His arresting hazel eyes flashed, the green flecks in them swirling about his pupils. I had seen nothing like them before in any Frenchman. I was almost dying to know what nation had yielded such a remarkable combination of features. I almost could not hold his gaze.

As his thin, sharply pointed lips parted slightly the door to warden Gagnon's office opened and the boys began to file inside. As he passed by me he stopped for only an instant, so close to me that I could perceive his slightly aquiline nose and remarkably smooth complexion. His foreign eyes held reluctant magic and were ringed like a feral cat's with bits of gold. Something raw and untamed lingered beneath the far reaching depths of his facade. The hallways were narrow and I could feel his breath against my cheek in the dank stone hall.

"Brest." He breathed so lowly that I could detect neither his true tone or accent. Then he spun on his heel with the same intensity and was gone through the warden's door. I followed inside, as was my duty, and stood beside him. His single word echoed in my mind as Gagnon looked over the boys and assigned them with little thought. He had said it with such distaste that I almost did not believe it to be his home. He spoke of the city the way released inmates spoke of their cells.

With this thought in mind I looked at him again. It was experience which separated him from the others. What made them look so young was their wide-eyed wonder at their surroundings. They had never been in a prison before. The stone walls which had become maddeningly grey and a source of depression and annoyance to me were wholly new to the boys, and therefore their fascination betrayed how green they were. They looked as vulnerable as every batch of new boys always had looked, some even looked terrified. The dark child already looked as if he owned the place. The spartan stone and filth of a french prison was nothing new to him. He had looked around as if apprising it and comparing it to those of his memory.

The prison at Brest was well known for harboring almost every inhabitant of the city at one point or another. Had the boy been referring to the jail?

"...and you will shadow me." Gagnon said matter-of-factly. I understood his choice well. All of the other boys looked weak and would prove to be easy pickings for the inmates. It was not so with the caramel-skinned and severe young man standing erect before his desk. The room was empty except for Gagnon, the younger man, and myself. "I like the look of you." There was a mechanical sense of precision and intent to his gaze as he accepted the warden's appraisal of his person. An insult probably would have inspired the same dispassionate deference. However, there was not an ounce of submission in his stance.

Gagnon had meant nothing untoward, you must understand, he was merely noting the qualities I have already expounded upon. Neither man paid the slightest amount of attention to me. I might as well of not even been in the room. I tried to gauge the younger man's reactions discretely, through only the corner of my eye. I received the distinct impression that he was well aware of my gaze and found it irrelevant and unimportant. He seemed to be the type to find very little worth his concern.

"What is your name?" Gagnon asked. He himself was entirely common in appearance and only slightly stout yet strong. He was somewhat small in stature and his eyes were wideset and brown. His clipped greying hair was also thinning. A network of lines were entrenched about his keen eyes and almost nonexistent lips. He was missing half of one ring finger and walked with a slight limp. The prison had devoured his youth and his heart. He was a man entirely devoted to his work. As far as I know, he had no family, nothing to speak of outside of Toulon.

"Javert." He replied with the same dearth of emotion. It was a french name undoubtedly, however not one I had ever heard before. It could very well have been a creation of his own and told me nothing of is nationality. The warden peered at him, waiting for him to divulge his first name. Javert stood stolidly beneath that gaze which had caused others to crumble. It seemed he was naturally a man of few words. The warden shook his head and wrote this down, not particularly caring if the quiet young man was particularly secretive. He found the incessant blathering of most youths unbearable and most of his assistants did not last a week.

"Very well." Gagnon had finished writing. "How old are you?"

"I'm not sure, Monsieur." Javert's tone and expression were unreadable.

"Seventeen." The warden corrected and Javert accepted this blandly, as if such details did not really matter. He might have responded in precisely the same way had Gagnon declared him to be eighty.

After several other trifles were taken care of Javert and I left the small stone office side by side. Gagnon had told me to take him to be fitted for a particular uniform, befitting of his rank as the warden's personal assistant. I wanted so badly to speak to him as I did not know when we would again be alone, but I could not begin to think of what to say. His singular eyes were ever fixed ahead.

"I am Desjardins." I said at last and Javert nodded politely, though I could tell he was not genuinely interested. He barely looked at me. At the time I blamed his disinterest on the fact that he must have been quite overwhelmed. While it would have been polite for him to reintroduce himself, he did not. He knew that I already knew and that was enough. I would come to learn that niceties were even more abhorrent and foreign to him than the idea of true kindness.

"The warden has gone through many assistants." He stated as if he had known the man for years. How he had gleaned this I was not sure. Something in Gagnon's manner must have tipped him off, although what exactly what he had seen was beyond me. He did not even need to ask. "Is it against your codes to tell me why, Monsieur Desjardins?"

He stopped and so did I. His strange eyes bore into mine. He was nearly my height, I bent my chin, not of my own volition. His gaze paralyzed me.

"The warden is demanding, but he is no match for Toulon itself." I said. "We guards fare little better than the prisoners." At this his eyes narrowed, dangerously. Such hatred and disgust burned for a brief instant that I thought he might attempt to murder me in the corridor. He muttered something unintelligible through gritted teeth before walking swiftly in the direction I had been leading him. I quickly caught up to him. Javert had almost managed to convince me that he knew the way himself.

"Not many men can handle spending so much time in such a dismal place with grace. We have lost as many guards to madness as prisoners." I said quickly and while his facial expression was no longer full of unmitigated loathing it was by no means soft. His normal expression seemed to be one of cool anger beneath an imperious calm. He seemed to be impressed by nothing.

"I'm sure." He said politely and I was certain that I detected a slight accent of some kind. It was implacable and exotic and almost unnoticeable at once. He was again disinterested. If I was right, and he had spent time in Brest Prison, he already knew about the kinds of terrors which flourished only under prison conditions. He may have known exactly what became of man when he was locked away. I saw one of his eyes focus squarely on me. It was if he was seeing me for the first time. He was watching me pale with the same clinical interest one looks at a an insect pinned to a board with. He seemed to be able to read my mind. As the exact words "What else could this child be sure of?" rang in my ears he lifted a single dark eyebrow. It was a quick gesture and before I could truly read it, it was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

The guards took an instant liking to Javert. He was not friendly, he was not warm, and most of them did not even know his surname. I still did not know his name. In six months only four of the men had had anything resembling a conversation with him. All they knew was that the new kid volunteered to patrol the prison's corridors at night on almost a regular basis. He kept watch dutifully and they had nothing to worry about as long as his keen eye kept watch. As all of the guards despised night patrolling between the cells in Toulon the young man became a fast favorite. It was not long before he claimed both halves of the night shift every night, leaving him unoccupied during the day. However, no one ever saw him during the light hours. He would attend dinner and breakfast, and not speak with any of the men around him unless it was to convey or seek some bit of information pertinent to our work. He knew everyone's names. How he had come to do so was not clear, as he had never introduced himself and very few of the actual guards had attempted to introduce themselves to him. He was too frigid to inspire that type of reaction. I was the closest person to him in Toulon and over the course of his first six or seven months I had spoken with him no more than a dozen times.

The only thing that denoted our closeness (and it is a stretch to even call it that) were small changes in his manner. When he was certain that we were alone he smiled tiny smiles. He had a strange habit of resting his forefinger against the sloping side of his nose so that his fingertip rested between his eyes. His long straight hair bore a single curl, in the front, which he would also twist like a schoolgirl at odd moments, when he had forgotten himself. These instances were rare but endearing. I felt a sense of pride in knowing that, as far as I could tell, I was the only living being alive aware of his sense of humor. He also, like any young man who could get his hands on a decent amount of food, ate with an abandon he showed during no other activity.

If it were not for the gusto with which he ate we all might have thought him some sort of otherwordly creature separate from us. The romantic in me could not help but paint him as some sort of vampiric menace or silent guardian built from the same stone as Toulon herself. Depending on my mood he suited both and I silently had applied manifold other roles and titles to him. I had often wondered what he thought about, as no man's thoughts are comprised solely of his duties, regardless of how hard he tries. I wondered why he was trying so hard. What had happened to him?

The inmates and the prison itself had sent the rest of the boys he had come with running early on. None had lasted more than two weeks. One, the mousy boy from Avignon, had nearly been killed by a prisoner. This is when all of the others had started to leave. Javert had not been very much affected by this and when the other boys left he noted their absence even less. As far as I could tell he had never made an effort to speak with them. It was several days after the Avignon boy's near-death and the first departures that Javert had first applied for the night watch. He claimed merely that "If he was too weak for it, it would kill him and he would deserve it." He always spoke of who deserved what as if he alone was the touchstone of exact equity. His power was derived from this conviction that he invariably knew what punishments or desserts all men had merited. Although, how he thought that he could possibly deserve death was beyond me. I have never looked at a man and earnestly believed that he deserved to die, regardless of his mistakes. The boy beside me seemed almost infallible and somewhat charming despite himself, if very distant.

Even during the day the inmates were a fearsome bunch. By night their proximity caused me anxiety as they had chewed up and spit out guard after guard like a lumbering dog gnawing his way through unfortunate toy after toy for years. Why they had not yet attempted to antagonize the young man I had no idea. None of the guards did. It was one of the many mysteries which surrounded Javert. I am certain that they tried and he quickly put them in their place. Javert has the unique abilty to make almost anyone feel as if their place is beneath him.

"Desjardins," He said to me one night during dinner, without preamble. Everyone else was tired from a long day's work but he had just awakened. So had I. My distaste for the night watch was nothing compared to my desire to be in his presence. Every other guard was practically sagging in a giant puddle about the table's long benches. Javert sat upright, his eyes sharp. He was ready and eager for the night's vigil. I attempted to mirror his staunch determination but I doubt he noticed. At the time, however, I imagined him to be incredibly impressed with me. I was thrilled that he was going to speak with me and positively dying to know exactly what he had to say. His voice held a certain quality of command. A thrill shot through me as his muscled outer thigh pressed against mine; there were too many men on the bench.

"How was 23091's behavior today?" He asked without looking at me and I felt slightly annoyed that this was all he wanted to know, even though I should not have been surprised. I searched my mind for which prisoner he might have been referring to as I moved my spoon haphazardly through my stew. As much as I tried I could not recall. All of the long numbers and gaunt faces were so similar. Javert's almost encyclopedic knowledge of Toulon extended to the prisoners as well. He knew every last one by face, number, and transgression. I sometimes wondered if he had their criminal records memorized.

"Common imbecile. Enjoys butchering the new meat, not that they don't deserve it. Gagnon has informed me that we have a new tenant."

If I was supposed to enjoy his dry humor he did not give me the opportunity to laugh. He merely continued on. His description rang a bell, however it had not occurred to me that all of the assaults done on the newly incarcerated were perpetrated by the same prisoner. All of the prisoners of Toulon were a single collective mass to me; a many-headed monster housed in separate unwieldy bodies and connected by a length of chain. Unless they were an immediate threat to myself or others I did not consider them at all. Many had been there longer than me and it seemed to me the most natural thing in the world that they would be there making a nuisance of themselves.

"If he has been quiet all day we should expect some trouble, but not for two weeks at least." He said with a small reassuring smile. One of his hands squeezed my shoulder and my heart skipped a beat. He cocked his head to the side, obviously finding something interesting in my expression. I was momentarily fearful. While not excessively stupid, I am almost incapable of deception. My emotions have always been plainly visible on my face regardless of any effort I make to conceal them. His hazel eyes bore into mine "Begin steeling yourself tonight." He spoke matter-of-factly before rising from the table and walking quickly out of the dining hall. I wondered if he was aware of my attachment to him. He was far too intelligent not to have been. At the time I did not want to think that such things were inconsequential to him.

There was still an hour before our shift began and I wondered what precisely he would do with that hour, as it seemed he lived for little else but work. I wondered if he really memorized files in his spare time. I resisted the urge to follow him.

* * *

xblackstonex: Thanks so much!

AmZ: As this goes on, I hope you find my Javert less and less inhumanly constant. I'm totally trying to avoid a one-dimensional Javert. There's more than enough depictions of one-dimensional Javert to go around.

An: Paper Gangsta by Lady Gaga is the best song ever.


	3. Chapter 3

It was only from watching Javert whenever I could, and paying an insufficient amount of attention to my own rounds, that I came to learn how he had so quickly taken to the night watch without incident. It was surprisingly simple.

There are guards like me, who will threaten violence and punishment until judgment day, but, in earnest, are loath to ever actually follow through. I abhor violence, even in my own defense. While I will strike back if it is a matter of life or death, I have never derived a whit of satisfaction from seeing a broken man laying in a pulp on the floor and having my hands covered in his blood. I do not feel vindicated or even justified. I have never understood how some men, such as Sauvageot, the previous night guard, only appear to feel vindicated when others are suffering because of them. I had seen him break a prisoner's legs just to watch him scream. I had seen him torment a dying prisoner for the fun of it. He had spent nearly a week by this man's bedside, reminding him constantly of the hell he was about to encounter. Men like him made me doubt if the right men were imprisoned.

Javert was thankfully nothing like Sauvageot, who was on an endless quest to attain retribution for imagined insults. While he did strike out at prisoners, it was only when they threatened him physically or were overly rude. This did not happen often, as he was generally respectful to them and allowed them to sleep in peace as long as they kept the peace. He walked through the narrow corridors between the celled walls as silently as a phantom. He did not speak to any of them and looked at them with the same removed expression he used at almost all times, and with everyone save myself. His footsteps only sounded when he turned corners. Slivers of moonlight caught in his hair. His dark blue uniform was almost black in the dark. Sometimes I could only see him at all when he turned corners and his coattails billowed briefly behind him. The only complaint I had was that he would often like to deviate from assigned sections, without notifying Gagnon. He switched with me sometimes as much as three times a week.

It was as I heard a cry on the opposite side of the prison that the warning Javert had given me began to ring in my ears.

"Begin steeling yourself now." He had said and as I raced toward the source of the commotion the reasoning behind his warning finally occurred to me. 23091 considered himself a bit of an artist and liked to commemorate every new convict's arrival with a certain mark. This mark was always made with a makeshift and deeply unsanitary knife. He had killed four men over the years, two of these before I had even arrived, and had scarred nearly every convict in the place. He had yet to complete his signature mark on a living man and I had yet to see him try.

As I came to the source of the racket I did not find the sight I had expected. Instead I found Romilly, a rather incompetent guard by anyone's standards, laying on the floor with his foot caught between the bars of a cell. Blood was flung through a column of moonlight glittering with dust as an inmate dug his teeth into the man's ankle. I watched in horror as he gnawed like a rabid animal. I was paralyzed. Time itself seemed to slow as Javert came to the other end of the corridor. With a quick glare at me he sped toward Romilly and the inmate.

As Romilly flailed on the ground, screaming like a child, Javert took the blunt end of his club and jammed it directly into the top of the rabid convicts head. The convict did not let go. By Javert's third strike the man was laying on the ground, prone and blood spurting around him, from what would prove to be a fatal wound. Javert didn't even look at the inmate's corpse. He immedeately bent down next to Romilly, who had fainted.

"Idiots." He ground out as he gently pulled the older man's battered foot out from between the bars. With a snarl he stood up straighter than I had ever seen before and slammed his club against all of the bars until the entire floor rattled with jarring noise.

"Let this be a lesson to you all!" He howled with bestial power, as if he were the focal point of a storm. His hair stood on end with unspent electricity like a wolf and his eyes burned. The many eyes of half as many prisoners were wide and blinked around him like a cold see of stars in the dark. They had learned. It was plain to see. Understanding was mirrored between them. I was in awe. I couldn't breathe.

He looked at me and the spell was broken. The convicts returned to their sleep. I still couldn't breathe.

"Desjardins." He said and I thought my legs might dissipate beneath me. A breeze swept through the prison and played momentarily in his hair, fanning it out behind him. It was so dark that it nearly blended into the surrounding shadow where the moon light did not catch it. The rest of him was still as a statue. "Take this utter failure to the infirmary. I'm going to continue my rounds." He said lowly and stepped directly over Romilly's prone form. He brushed passed me without a word and faded into the dark.

I gathered myself in short order and went to attend to Romilly. As I bent beside him to check his pulse, I noticed something strange on the floor. Where Javert had been standing there was a card about the size of a playing card, but with a strange image. On it was a slightly warped image. An old man dressed in blue with a hat like a mushroom stood somewhat hunched. His beard was long and white and he held an hour glass in an outstretched hand. A long golden staff was held tightly in the other. There was not a single word on the card, only the warped image of an old man with a strange smile. It was warm, which meant that someone had been holding it not long ago.

It was a fortune-telling card. Such games were common amongst the gypsies and yet highly illegal. I touched it again and found the same traces of warmth. Javert had been holding it. He had lost it in his excitement. I looked at the card again before slipping it in my pocket and returning my attention to Romilly. It explained everything yet nothing simultaneously. The man I knew was the most diligent and disciplined I had ever come across. His dedication to his duty was a borderline obsessive fervor. It could almost be frightening at times. Guards twice his age could not do the job that he did half as well as he did it. He seemed to be a mere extension of the law...with dark hands that withheld illegal bits of magic in the dark, where no one could see. He was certainly as secretive as a gypsy. No real name, no true age, nothing known of his past aside from a single tarot card. I had proof of his gypsy lineage in my hands and I hadn't the slightest idea of what to do with it. It held the scent of his skin.

* * *

Nimue I Am: Thank you very much. I have something planned for Valjean's character that I'm pretty sure you haven't seen before.

AmZ: Interesting comparison. I didn't think of that. Little by little bit Javert will be revealed. Ah, poor Desjardins. Glad you like him.


	4. Chapter 4

Javert looked briefly around the dining hall as if expecting some sort of inquisition before entering. If I was in his position, I would have done the same. Being found in the middle of a prison with a tarot card in your pocket is not an enviable position. And, if he had one card, he surely had more. I did not know how many came in a set of cards, but I knew that there was no point in having only one. I had seen the tramps at fairs read marvelous things in similar decks of cards. I wondered if my friend could read them. It would certainly explain how he was always multiple steps ahead of those around him. It was uncanny and strange; just as he was. My imagination attempted to run away with assumption and accusation. The tales I had heard of the gypsies all my life were fantastical and cruel and often terrifying. I could see how tensely he held his shoulders as he came nearer to the table. I wondered what kind of magics he was concealing from me--

It only took one close look at him to set the witch hunt whirling in my fevered mind to a screeching halt.

The single curl in the front of his otherwise neat hair was nearly frayed at the end from what must have been a night of nervous twirling. He looked positively crushed. There was no fear of rejection or punishment in his eyes. He looked as if the only thing in the world that had mattered to him had been taken from him. He held his lip between his teeth, hardly touching the food he usually rapaciously devoured.

"Javert?" I said softly. I placed my hand lightly on his forearm and he turned his head toward me. What I saw was enough to make me forget the impenetrable and unfeeling Javert I encountered on a day to day basis. His eyes were swollen. There were no tears in them, as he had obviously cried them dry hours before. While his cheeks and eyes were dry, and the rest of his person as fastidiously tidy as usual, he could not hide those eyes. They burned.

"Javert, Are you--" I remembered his distaste for questions with obvious answers and stopped myself. The last thing I wanted to do was upset him further. Offending him was easy enough on a good day, I could not even imagine how delicate his temperament would be after a night of weeping. I had the card in my innermost coat pocket, and it was hard not to take it out immediately and return it to him. I couldn't help but wonder what it meant to him. I parted my lips to speak and he removed my hand from his arm. Without a word he marched out of the dining hall.

I passed Javert a total of three times during the night's long shift. Each time he ignored my presence in a way he had not done since we had first met. The card burned my skin through the fabric of my coat. Every time we passed the urge to return it to him grew exponentially. Come morning I was too anxious to be exhausted, as I usually was from my rounds, and it took all of my self control not to rush to his room and breakdown the door and instead eat breakfast first. Javert was not in the dining hall.

Once there it took all of my courage to even knock. I stood like a shy gentleman courting a lady for a long while, awkwardly clicking my heels. With a sigh I spun on the abused soles of my shoes and began to trudge toward my own room, which was four doors down. I was suddenly horribly tired. I yawned and stretched. A jolt shot through me where the card brushed against my skin. I could not move, there were eyes on me. I felt as if the whole world could see what they had no reason to expect would be there and would never notice.

This time, with staunch determination, I strode to his door and sharply knocked three times. It opened a crack, and one of his mesmerizing eyes peered up at me through a curtain of dark hair. The tip of his single curl had found its way into his mouth and was slightly damp with his saliva. He merely raised an eyebrow at me questioningly. His gaze was not half as sharp as it usually was. His head was not held as high. He was physically and emotionally exhausted.

I merely peered into his eyes, hoping that they would convey the gravity of the situation. They did the trick. He stepped back, and the door swung open. I stepped inside and it quickly shut behind me.

The rooms given to the guards at Toulon much resembled the bare rooms of a priest. Each held a small bed and a chest of drawers. Few had windows. Javert's did not. The bed was small, but a decent enough size for one. There was little else to the room. There was space enough perhaps for a desk to fit comfortably, and that was all. The door locked. However, the sight of my friend's bare wrist and neck proved a far more interesting study than his Spartan surroundings. He sat on his bed, watching me closely as I examined these pieces of him for the first time. His coat and vest had been discarded and lay in a heap at the foot of his bed. He sat in the middle of this bed. He was only in his shirt sleeves, and these were unbuttoned. I could only glimpse the paler parts of his wrists where blue veins twisted within them. He seemed so much smaller without his uniform. His neck was strong yet fit perfectly between his sharp shoulders.

"Desjardins." He said sharply, and I had the decency to blush. He did not seem to care that I was blatantly ogling every uncovered piece of skin on his lean body. He only seemed concerned with the fact that I was usurping his time. He did not react to my blush at all. He merely crossed his one leg over the other one and folded his arms. He cocked his head to the side.

Without preamble I reached into my pocket and took out the card of the oddly formed old man. His jaw nearly unhinged. His posture deflated.

"Des…Desjardins?" He stuttered, his eyes wide as a child as he slowly moved lithe fingers toward the card, as if it would disappear at any moment. He looked at it as one would look on a holy icon. It was too much. I had to know why. As his fingers came within a hair's breadth of the card I stepped back, just out of his reach. All traces of humanity left him at once.

"What do you want, Desjardins?" His voice was frigid and so low I almost did not hear it. A shiver ran down my spine. It was my turn to be at a loss. I could feel my eyelashes poking the skin between my lids and brows. A grim smirk twisted his face into something sinister as he stood. He took a step forward and I took one back. He took one forward. I took one back. It was not long before I was against the stone wall. He crossed what remained of the small room in one step and pressed himself against me. He smelled slightly of bland soap and sweat. I drank in these rather commonplace scents as if they were ambrosia. His entire body was taught against mine. His feet spread my own feet and legs apart, so I could not fully brace myself against the wall.

"I see how you watch me." His whispered in my ear and bit down hard enough to make me gasp. He began to lave the small wound he must have caused with his tongue. His hands were digging into my waist as he bit along my jaw line.

"What do you want from me?" He asked again, his voice low and baleful. I couldn't speak. I could feel myself hardening against his thigh. His hand was on my chest and his mouth was wrapped around my ear. I pressed against him like a whore as he roughly shoved my coat aside and grasped my semierect member through the fabric of my trousers. His hard nails scraped against it and I gasped.

"I think I know." He said as he squeezed my cock tightly. I bucked against him and he released me, only dragging the tips of his fingers along my flesh. The fabric of my pants was rough and tortured my sensitized cock more and more as it strained against it.

"Would you like me take you in my mouth." He grasped me hard and I whimpered. "Taste you, tease you, take you into me and drink like I'm dying of thirst; mewing like a kitten as you fuck my mouth." He pulled roughly on my cock and I feared I might lose my mind. I was awash in sensation, unaware of anything but his hand stroking me like he was born for it, when he spoke the words which changed everything.

"Would that keep your filthy mouth shut?" All at once I stopped rutting, stopped moaning, and stopped responding. In the corner of my eye I saw the card on the floor. He stopped upon feeling me stiffen. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes were black. He merely rested against me, and I against the wall. His hair was a mess and tangled with my own blonde curls. In the mirror against the opposite wall I could see myself, his exact opposite in appearance. I looked so pale with his skin next to mine.

His eyes were boring into me.

"I…I only wanted to know why." I said in a small voice and he looked absolutely horrified. He attempted to lurch away from me but I held him fast. I could not bear to let him go. He looked at me blankly as I pressed my lips against his. He responded with all of the ardor of a marble statue. My hands fell land I let him back away from me. I felt my heart break a tiny bit as he flung himself to the opposite side of the room.

"They were my mother's." He croaked and put his head in his hands. I do not think he was crying; he was too still. I silently picked up the card and placed it beside him.

"Javert?" I tried quietly and he did not answer. "Jav--"

"Leave." He said without a single trace of emotion. I obliged.

* * *

Nimue I Am: Thank you very much.

AmZ: Your amount of knowledge is ridiculous and beautiful and I envy you. The gloomy french peasant will be introduced in a way you wouldn't expect. Also, The build of their relationship will be done in a way I haven't seen yet. It's very much like a jigsaw puzzle.


	5. Chapter 5

After that night Javert did not speak to me. We did not sit together at meals, and we did not walk anywhere together. While I had other acquaintances amongst the guards at Toulon, he did not. It seemed he had become mute. He did not even speak to them in order to gain information. I only saw him when I passed him during the night watch, and these coincidental meetings happened less and less often as the weeks passed. I only kept the night watch because I had grown used to it, and knew that changing my habits would be an incredibly unpleasant experience. Being so estranged from Javert was even more unpleasant and I could not bring myself to sever that final cord.

Nearly two months had passed when I, to my immense surprise, found him waiting from me by the entrance to the section of the prison I would usually patrol. He stood erect by the door. His expression was not unkind, but neither was it warm. His hands rested motionlessly by his sides.

"Desjardins," He began casually, as if it had not been weeks since we had spoken.

"I have a first name, you know." I snapped without even thinking about it. Sometimes I wondered if he was human. Perhaps the other guards were smart to stay away from him. "You, of all people, _should _know."

"Desjardins." He continued as if I had not spoken. "I was wondering if we might trade posts tonight."

He had asked me this many times before, however; this was the first time that the question made me want to strangle him. That was _all _he had to say to me. Not an apology, not a kind word, not a question that showed he cared for me in the slightest. I was foolish to be surprised.

"As you like it." I spat and spun on my heel. As I stalked away his sigh echoed down the hall. I turned to see his expression but all I managed to catch was the sight of his coattails flying through the doorway and into the dark. I crossed the corridor and made my way to the western entrance to the cells.

I had spent the first hours of my watch stalking about the place, sulking like a petulant child. Thankfully I had not run across Javert, otherwise I might have caused him bodily harm. My anger had petered out into exhaustion and I had started to drag my feet when suddenly a cry erupted from the far end of the prison. I could hear Javert's footsteps racing toward the increasingly deafening caterwauls. A man was undoubtedly being attacked. I followed my ears and found that Javert had gotten there first.

Within the cell four men were holding down a large man in the dark. He screamed and they bashed his head against the floor, threatening him with all kinds of things if he did not remain silent.

"HELP!" He screamed and screamed. He had tried to fight them off, but he was ultimately overpowered. Javert stood by impassively, his hands pressed against the bars. He tilted his head slightly to the side as the prisoner thrashed about. It was then that one of the older prisoners, a man with no teeth and almost entirely bald aside from a waist length tuft of mangy grey hair. He smiled with manic glee as he brandished a small makeshift knife in the air like it was made of gold.

"Turn 'im over." He growled.

The prisoner's eyes widened in horror. "Please!" He begged Javert, his eyes wide with horror and screaming the entreaties he barely dared to whisper. This time his forehead was bashed against the floor. He let out a low moan as his already abused head was further damaged. He winced in time with what must have been painful throbbing.

"Please…" he called out one last time in Javert's direction and the man only turned his back. He faced the opposite wall as 23091 began to take his knife to the new prisoner.

"Javert! You can't just--"

"Leave."

"No! I refuse to just stand here and watch--"

"Then leave."

"Javert, if you do not stop this then I will go find Gagnon--"

"Wonderful--"

An earsplitting cry was heard. I could smell the blood. I could not believe that he wanted to switch posts with me only so that I would not be able to stop a man from being tortured. 23091 had killed four men. Would this man become the fifth?

"--all though, I think a doctor would serve your purposes better. Gagnon's knowledge of medicine is abysmal."

I felt my fists clench at my sides. How he could be so glib when a man lay bleeding to death at his feet was beyond me. "Desjardins." He said with his usual disinterest and I felt rage seething within me.

"Jean-Baptiste."

He spoke so softly that I almost did not hear. I felt all of my anger fall to the floor. "Please, go find the doctors , Jean-Baptiste."

He said and suddenly spun on his heel. His voice rang in my head, sweeter than a church choir. "23091!" All at once he was made entirely of steel. "You have had your laughs at his expense. If you do not desist immediately I will make you desist."

"Like the likes of you would come near a man with a knife!"

Javert took the keys out of his pocket and jingled them purposefully. As he pressed them into the cell's lock he cast one last glance at me. The key turned in the lock. "Run!" He demanded and I ran.

When I returned with help the inmates were cowering in opposite corners of the jail cell except one. Javert was kneeling beside the new inmate. His knees soaked in blood. 23091 was laying behind them, in a pool of his own blood, his own little makeshift knife sticking out of his neck. I watched Javert glare at the wounds on the convict's side. They were so bloody and disfigured that I could hardly tell what the mark was supposed to be. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of his darker hands pressed against the convict's side, the side facing him, where no one would see. It was a touch that would heal and accomplish nothing. It was of comfort. He whispered something to him before rising.

"Take him away." He told the doctor's staff blandly and stood aside. His hands were covered in blood. He had been touching him.

* * *

AmZ: Yeah, I like to go places other people generally don't. It's my hobby. In life it usually just ends up irrevocably screwing me over, but it makes my writing interesting.

MizM: Thanks very much!


	6. Chapter 6

It had been hard to stand and watch Javert lie so easily to Gagnon. He spoke of a small riot which had never happened. With every passing day he made less and less sense. He was a the son of a vagabond who had the sense of duty of a constable. He strived to appear as emotionless as possible while toting around remembrances of his mother in his pocket. The law was his religion, and yet he would perjure himself at the drop of a hat. That he could trick his superiors so happily, and without a whit of regret, was distressing to say the least. I had imagined one such as him would have worshipped authority.

Gagnon believe him of course. He was the best assistant he had ever had, and quite possibly the best guard in the entire prison. Javert and I left together. The second we were out of the door he turned without a word. I followed him.

He was headed toward one of the washrooms. He disappeared inside. I did not wait for him.

With the mangled body of the prisoner and the corpse of the other still fresh in my mind I could not bring myself to even smell food. I decided to go check on the hurt prisoner in the infirmary. From what I had heard he was still there, and I was curious at his connection with Javert, who I had thought had no human connection other than myself. My sentimental nature was well known, so no one would question me talking to him.

I had expected to find him hostile and angry or unconscious. I had not expected to find him unconscious with Javert standing beside his bed, looking for all the world as if he had stabbed him himself. He had chosen this time specifically. He knew everyone would be at breakfast and no one would see him enter or leave, as people would undoubtedly question his motives for visiting with the convict. He scowled at my questioning gaze.

"Why do you follow me?" He whispered. While I almost could not hear him, I could feel his annoyance keenly.

"Why did you let 23901 stab him half to death?" I snapped back just as quietly. He rolled his eyes.

"For once, think! Had I answered the damsel's call of distress, and saved her this bit of pain, what do you think the inmates would have done to her later?"

I couldn't speak.

"He would have been forever known as the guard dog's pet. Do you know what happens to pets in a jail cell?"

Out of the corner of my eye I could see that the prisoner was awake, and looking at Javert is if he was seeing him for the first time. He looked enraptured, yet terrified. His eyes were like blue marble and round as dinner plates.

"You saved his pride."

"I did nothing so tawdry."

"You saved his life."

"You were the one who fetched the doctors."

"You protected the well being of a criminal."

"Desjardins, your romantic nonsense never ceases to offend me."

"He's a thief."

"He stole a loaf of bread."

"He robbed a house."

"He broke a window pane."

24601's file did not get that specific. Javert had been speaking with him.

"He's a convict."

"Exactly. Letting him bleed out would have been a blessing. He'll do his time; and then once released he will learn that his incarceration is perpetual, whether he can feel the chains around his ankle or not. He will get what he deserves." Javert then looked at the prisoner. Their eyes met and I did not understand what exactly transpired, but it was powerful. Something within the very air seemed to shift.

"Desjardins, I will meet you by the west entrance." He said. I understood that I was dismissed and my expression must have revealed my misery, for suddenly I felt a pair of eyes on me. 24601 looked at me with sympathy. The pained eyes within his wan face were kind. They were not the eyes of a murderer or a maniac, which were common in Toulon.

I left and waited by the door, which I left cracked open an alomst unnoticeable amount. I pressed my ear against it. What I would have given for the boldness to put my eye to the crack between the stone wall and the wooden door.

"Please, no more." It was 24601's voice.

"Do not flatter yourself."

"Tell me that they weren't because of me, the both of them. Look me in the eye and tell me that they weren't. Then I'll stop flattering myself."

The silence hammered on my heart.

"You can't, can you."

I wanted to scream.

"I came here a thief. How many times a murderer will I be before I leave this place?"

"You haven't even--"

"But you have, because of me."

I almost could not hear what he said next over the pounding in my chest.

"Why, Javert?" ... "Just tell me why."

"I..." He was choking. This prisoner had him at a loss. My hands were shaking. "...Valjean," He began at last and his voice seemed to be breaking beneath the weight of his emotions, emotions that were not directed toward me.

The next thing I knew the door was hefted open with unnecessary gusto and I barely moved out of the way in time. If Javert saw me he did not say anything, he only stalked down the hall.

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AmZ: Since this fic follows Javert from about his late teens to late thirties (Give or take some. I haven't done the math yet) I'm following how he matures and changes from A-B. The A I made up pretty much. The B will be more like canon Javert. Also, as a writer I plant questions which I answer in time. I am on a one-woman anti-plothole campaign. Keep in mind that this will be told out of order aswell.


	7. Chapter 7

I could not fathom what sort of relationship Javert and 24601 had. At first I thought they might have been old friends, but that would have been impossible. According to the convict's records he was from Favorelles. According to Javert…there was no telling where he was from. He had traits of several nations and nationalities, and the accent he had once had, had disappeared before I could identify it. He now spoke like a Parisian, the way Gagnon did. While he had said he was from Brest, it was very likely that he was not. He could have been from the moon for all I knew.

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. In my time at Toulon I had seen several friends and even a lover imprisoned. However, that did not seem likely. There was no friendly familiarity between them. The prisoner had looked at Javert as if he were some sort of beatific guardian angel who had materialized out of thin air. Seeing Javert defend a convicted thief had yet again changed everything I had thought about him. I doubted that he would ever defend me so emphatically. This was the beginning of the end of my affection for him.

While I could not and probably will never be able to explain precisely how a sort of understanding had formed between them, at the time my brain was fevered with hateful imaginings. I wondered what and why and how and who until I had driven myself half mad. What did this prisoner possess that I did not?

It had been months since Javert had even spoken to me and I had almost forgotten what had kept me so foolishly captivated. In fact, I had started to wonder if he still worked at Toulon. I had not seen him. He had talked to Gagnon and gotten our nightly territories permanently switched, so he had no reason to speak with me. I was almost entirely free of thoughts of him when, one morning, after a particularly chilly night of haunting Toulon's jails, he sat down beside me. My jaw unhinged. The image before me was almost nothing like what I had remembered.

He was nearly white. He had gone from a swarthy earthen brown to a complexion no darker than a Frenchman who had spent a few weeks on the coast. A life lived at night had done this to him gradually, of course, but nearly half a year without seeing him made every tiny difference a complete upheaval. His hair was pulled back, and while I missed seeing it swing lushly about his shoulders, this also afforded me a view of his face I had never seen, as it had been his custom to hide beneath his thick dark hair. He also seemed to be even taller.

I wondered what he could possibly have to say to me. The night watch was over. It had been almost painfully uneventful. There was no pertinent information to be exchanged. A thrill shot through me as he shifted and his leg moved against mine. They really need to invest in larger benches.

"Good morning, Jean-Baptiste." He said with a yawn and I spit out my porridge. My eyes must have been as wide as dinner plates. Both of the things he had said shocked me beyond reason. Even more so, as there was no apparent motive behind either of them. He scowled as the entire table turned to look at us as I spluttered and coughed. He stalked out of the dining hall with a growl.

A new century was dawning and some were filled with hope. Others with terror. All I was filled with jealousy and sadness. I hardly noticed the new year. Life, for me, had become a string of endless nights. It was an eternity during which I walked stone aisles between cells holding a single fermenting creature with a thousand unblinking eyes. Javert had not spoken to me since the incident at breakfast. Our only interaction since had consisted of me wandering blindly past my given bounds of guard duty one night and stepping into his territory. I followed my feet blindly until indistinct whispering reached my ears.

I stopped upon finding Javert's unmistakable silhouette leaning against the bars of one of the cells. His hands were wrapped about the bars. A taller man stood facing him. One more whisper was shared before the larger mans hands moved towards Javert's. Time seemed to stop as they came to rest above the smaller, darker digit's of the incredibly corrupt night guard. I have never felt such tension between two people before in all my life.

I felt eyes on me and looked to see an elderly prisoner sitting directly opposite me, where the bars formed a corner. He was unremarkable, aside from his piercing green eyes. I felt as if he could see through me, and knew every emotion I experienced as I looked at their intertwined fingers. Whether he was truly old or had been diminished by any number of years in Toulon is not of consequence. He regarded me with a knowing shake of his head before returning his attention to 24601 and Javert.

"I can't promise you that." One of them whispered and Javert removed his hands as if he had been burned. He then stalked away and 24601 rested his head against the bars. At the time I did not understand this exchange. However, it became clear to me how their understanding had come to be.

All of those times Javert had asked me to trade posts, he had asked in order to spend time with the prisoner. I had assumed it had merely been for a change of pace, but he had truly never deigned to give me an explanation. I had never asked for one. I had obliviously acquiesced time and time again, as it seemed to be against my nature to disobey him. I only had directly disobeyed him once, and the guilt had been suffocating.

It all became perfectly clear in five night's time, when 24601 ran from Toulon and Javert came running to me.

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AmZ: Thanks. I'll fix it and make it more realistic when I'm feeling more inspired. The inspiration is kind of starting to go honestly.

Storytellers: Thanks so much! I agree with you. lol.


	8. Chapter 8

I did not often shirk my duties as a watchmen, but three weeks of absolute nothing is enough to make anyone a bit restless and make them feel as if there is nothing to watch for. The night before I had brought a book and a candle. Actually, for several nights I had been bringing a book and a candle. I would have again, but I had finished the book. This left me with nothing to distract myself with. I had almost nodded off when I was shaken violently.

"Desjardins!"

Javert.

"A prisoner has escaped."

I was suddenly and inexplicably bursting with energy. "Which one?" I asked as I jumped to my feet. It was only then that I noticed his the anger in his eyes. The corner of his mouth twitched. The anger he was not showing seemed to twist sharply in the air about him.

"24601."

My first instinct was to comfort him. I started to move my hands toward his arms when he started to walk briskly away. There was the determination of a lioness in his steps. I followed. He spoke sharply as we walked. I could hear prisoners snickering around us.

"If we act quickly we can get him back in his cell before anyone realizes what he has done."

"Javert, we have to report this to Gagnon! We have to raise the alarm and alert--"

"By the time we go through official channels he could be halfway to America. By the time Gagnon lines up the troops and decides on a course of action he would already have a wife, two children, and a factory job in one of New York's slums. This is best."

We came to a stop outside of 24601's cell. It was open. None of the other prisoners had moved. Unsuccessful escape attempts were common in Toulon. 24601's chain lay in a corner. It was perfectly intact.

"How--"

"Ssh." Javert insisted and pushed the door to the cell right open. He walked over to the chain. He touched it in several places before walking back over to me.

"Touch my finger." He said and held it out in front of me. I did as he asked and found it covered in something thick and slimy.

"What on--"

"It's lard. Covered his foot in it, slid it right out. Look, it was on his hands too. You can see it on the bars where he opened the cell." He pointed to the lock and several bars near it. They were, indeed, coated with the stuff in spots. It was then that I looked and noticed a trail of sheen on the floor, where his slippery foot had been dragging behind him. It led toward the west entrance to the cells. Javert followed my gaze and the corner of his mouth twitched.

"Excellent work, Desjardins." He said before starting to follow the trail. It led about halfway to the door. Javert felt the doorframe in several places and looked at the carpeted hall in the corridor leading to the upper level. From there we followed disturbances in the carpet caused by his dragging right foot.

The floor above the prison was a storage room, and we had been able to deduce that this was where he had stopped climbing. It had several windows and many places to hide. None of the windows were open and it was obvious that none of them had been in quite a while. The air was so stale I almost choked on it.

"24601!" He barked. "We know you are in here! Either come out now or I will personally see to it that extra years added to your sentence for resisting arrest." The man that slowly appeared from behind a large stack of boxes was tall and muscular. What color his hair was I could not say, as the dirt of the prison had turned it brown. It hung in clumps down his back. He had the beginnings of a beard as convicts were not often permitted baths, let alone a shave. He had an undoubtedly square, very masculine jaw beneath the unseemly hair. I remembered his intense blue eyes and as I decided whether his nose was an English one or not Javert pounced on him.

"You are an absolute idiot!" He growled as he handcuffed him and started to drag him out of the room.. Javert must have been much stronger than he looked in order to accomplish this. 24601 was nearly a head taller than him and a good deal broader.

"I can't stay here!" The prisoner cried as he was dragged bodily away.

"Quiet." Javert whispered, but the prisoner was not listening.

"I can't! I won't! I'm already a thief! I-"

"QUIET!" Javert roared and in that instant several guards appeared at the steps.

24601 looked at Javert. He was contrite. The apology in his eyes was clear. Javert looked at 24601. There was nothing there but anger and quite likely, betrayal.

"This prisoner was trying to escape. Take him back to his cell." Javert then threw the convict down at their feet and stalked out of the door. 24601's head fell loudly upon the floor. They each grabbed one of his arms and with bewildered looks began to drag him away. I stood watching blankly as the prisoner began to weep like a child. Tears poured down his face.

"DESJARDINS!" Javert bellowed from the hall and I dashed out of the room. He was headed toward Gagnon's office. It seemed he would report this after all. It heartened me to know that the inmate had not corrupted him completely.

* * *

AmZ: The old prisoner's turn comes soon actually. I think I am going to do this whole story from four perspectives actaully. The only thing I have planned right now is a hot and agsty epilogue from Javert's POV. And yeah, that is basically why he usually fails as a guard.

AN: I appologize for the long wait. I actually forgot I was writing this until a reader gave my ego a good stroking today. There is only so much room in my head for things and I have been studying Freud lately. I've got penis on the brain. What can I say?


End file.
